Military Logistics Made Easy

   If doctrine is correct and the operational level is the conduit between the tactical and strategic levels with sustainment being the primary focus. Then this is where we begin to link the Army centric world of tactical support to Joint Operations where the Army supports its own units, other services, as well as coalition forces under Title X responsibilities for certain commodities and services. The issue is that at the operational level you do not conduct logistics to the tactical level the same way as you do to the strategic level. Yes, you are conducting receive, store, issue, and movement, but under two different battle rhythms. 

Theory and Execution

      What started me thinking about this was in the summer of 2007 when I was conducting an exercise for the 377 Theater Support Command (TSC). I also had been developing for the Battle Command Sustainment System (BCS3) program manager a cognitive trainer, with support from the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) contract managed by the United States (US) Army Research, Development, and Engineering Command (RDECOM) Simulation and Training Technology Center (STTC), teaching distribution management, and how automation can assist. The folks from the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) had not spent time in the armed forces so over the past year they have had to learn the distribution management process with no hands-on experiences to taint the process. They were interviewing some colonels from the TSC on the scenarios we were developing for the trainer when the colonels told them that they were all wrong in the way they were conducting logistical support to the scenarios. This confused the ICT personnel and they called me to come over to their location because we had a problem in our scenario development and may have to start all over in creating our scenario. We had been working diligently for the past year interviewing personnel and developing the scenarios so you can understand that I was not fond of the idea to start over. Upon arriving to their location and listening to the problem, the issue then became obvious to me. I had been tasked to develop the cognitive trainer to support the battle rhythm of logistical support from operational to tactical not strategic to operational. To old soldiers that have done these types of operations numerous times in the past it may not be a big deal in switching between the two levels, but for someone who has not been in the military (example contractors), or to young soldiers (officers and non-commission officers) this can be a significant emotional event. In this situation, there really was not any issue.  I got the colonels to understand the level of training the game was conducting and the interviews continued without any more problems. 

     The theory is that at the operational level (example ESC level) the support operations staff is split between two battle rhythms when trying to conduct logistics. This means they have two different reporting and sustainment cycles to deal with. The merging of two different logistical operational battle rhythms means one cycle is supporting operations forward and the other is sustaining operations forward. This is not a new concept and has always been there when conducting logistical support operations, the problem is it has never truly been identified as a staff operational issue, but has always caused problems early in the battle rhythm. Under the tactical level support, you are supporting the battlefield with commodities and services forward as possible to sustain combat operations. This leads to a more compressed time line to complete the reporting and sustainment cycles in support to the operation. When looking back to the strategic level you are projecting existing requirements, forecasting future requirements, and recourses needed to sustain the operational to tactical level support. This change in the operational-tempo can lead to a choke point or cut line between the operational and strategic levels when trying to transfer commodities and movement within the distribution network. This cut line does not only affect the sustainment cycle, but also affects what is to be reported lower to higher between the two levels (tactical and strategic). This difference in time and reported fields can lead to a break in sustainment, or staffs both lower and higher conducting redundant, as well as additional reporting requirements. The following diagram depicts the two different battle rhythms in relationship to the unit staffs and the levels they are operating under (See Figure 2; Levels of Logistical Support Cycle (Commodity Reporting and Movement).